1) The presentation discusses financing the transition to open access in scholarly publishing. It analyzes the current landscape which favors major publishers and presents challenges to transitioning to open access. 2) It boils the problem down to market control by publishers as monopolies over journals and a finite pile of money and manuscripts. 3) The presenter outlines five essential steps for transition: making open access a common priority through policy alignment; aligning financial and policy decisions; commitment, collaboration and communication; monitoring and analysis; and aligning reward systems to support open access.

1. Financing the Transition to Open Access
Mikael Laakso, D.Sc. (Econ.)
Associate Professor
Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Presentation at the LOA2018 Conference 1.6.2018
@mikaellaakso

2. My background and perspective
» Research has been focusing on how OA has
been introduced and changed scholarly
journal publishing.
» Member of the H2020 Commission Expert
Group "Future of Scholarly Publishing and
Scholarly Communication (FSP)”
» Member of the strategy group for journal
publisher negotiations on behalf of the Finnish
university library consortium (FinElib).
http://hdl.handle.net/10138/45238

3. Agenda
» What does the current landscape look like?
» Boiling down the problem
» Five essential steps for transition
» Homework

4. Disclaimer
This presentation contains only my personal views and opinions.
As such does not reflect those of my affiliations or collaborators.

5. The uphill starting position of open access
» Major publishers having no reason to hurry
» Market-controlling power over journal portfolios.
» Economies of scale in digital publishing.
» Academic merit systems
» Academics work hard to get published in prestigious journals & to gain.
positions on editorial boards.
» Universities/libraries unable to act aggressively
» Subscriptions increasingly expensive, very little money left over to support
alternative publishing models.

6. Open access article growth in Scopus
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Articles
Publication Year
Delayed Open Access
Hybrid Open Access
Open Access Journals (Free)
Open Access Journals (APC,
Megajournals)
Open Access Journals (APC)
Preliminary results

7. Is the journal landscape shifting or is it just
growing? (Scopus OA journals)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
5000
<2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Journals
Converted OA journals Born OA journals
Preliminary results

8. APC levels of OA journals in Scopus
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
Articles
APC (in USD)
Born OA Converted OA

9. Journal number growth per publisher type
(Scopus OA journals)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
5000
<2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Journals
Converted Commercial
Born Commercial
Converted Society
Born Society
Converted University
Born University
Preliminary results

10. © Hanken
Boiling down the problem

11. Market control is not on the buyer side
» Still mostly non-transparent pricing and contract terms.
» Each journal (and thus publisher) essentially a monopoly.
» Pricing extrapolated from historical spending.
» De-synced international negotiation schedules.
» Content supply disconnected from purchasing decision.
» Publication outlet rank deeply entangeled in academic merit systems.
» Decoupled buyer and primary end-customer.
» …..

12. One finite pile of manuscripts, several
monopolies competing for shares of it
Relieves
Lay Web
Lick Well
Reaping
Returns
Andra
Florans
City
Ages

13. One finite pile of money, several
monopolies competing for shares of it
Relieves
Lay Web
Lick Well
Reaping
Returns
Andra
Florans
City
Ages

14. We can´t change the past but we can
immediately start changing the future
» Though an increasing share of research is available open access in
some form, comprehensive access to old content is currently not a
legal reality.
» Optimal if such long-term access clauses are already present in
existing subscription agreements.
» But even if not, it is important to work out alternative access routes
to content published previously.

15. What it boils down to
Only pay to support publication and publication infrastructures, service
providers will then have to compete on a transparent playing field.

16. Universities Publishers
National Library ConsortiumLibraries
Intern. Science Policy
National Science Policy
Research Funders
Low potential to influence
High potential to influence

17. © Hanken
Five essential steps for transition

18. Five essential steps for transition
1. Open access made a common priority
2. Aligning financial decisions with policy decisions
3. Commitment, collaboration, and communication
4. Monitoring and analysis
5. Alignment of reward systems

19. Open access made a common priority
» The mix between top-down policy and bottom-up demand for
change needs to be aligned.
» It can not be the libraries taking on the task alone, needs to
be supported on the university-level.
» The result of negotiations should not dictate the direction and
aggressiveness of science policy ad-hoc, key criteria should be
decided beforehand with as high mandate as possible.

20. Aligning financial decisions with policy decisions
» Science Policy Decisions
» Long term
» Environmental/Situational factors unknown
» Motivated by values and ideology
» Flexible and evolving
» Business Decisions
» Short(er) term
» Environmental/Situational factors known, limited set of options
» Motivated by economical use of resources to support science policy
» Inflexible once made

21. Aligning financial decisions with policy
decisions
» The only leverage customers have is to decline signing
unfavourable agreements. Half-solutions should not be
considered.
» To align financial and policy decisions a holistic picture of
the financial infrastructure is needed, what are all the
financial inputs that publishers currently get?

22. Model of Financial Flows in Scholarly Publishing
Lawson, Gray, & Mauri (2016)

23. Applied to the United Kingdom
Lawson, Gray, & Mauri (2016)

24. Consortias are good for alignment.
The larger, yet unified in goals, the better
There is potential to further increase
international collaboration

25. Offsetting should not be the only strategy
» Only investing heavily into offsetting agreements with major
publishers is not the optimal solution for diversifying the
scholarly communication landscape and reducing the pricing
power of publishers.
» List prices for APCs and hybrid fees have had a tendency to increase rather
than decrease
» Publishers create new OA journals instead of converting old subscription
ones
» Drive for systemic change of the “old”, but also support new
complementary and substitute alternatives.

26. Models without APCs

27. Monitoring and analysis
» This is a fairly new area of expertise that blends bibliometrics, accounting,
and science policy.
» For supporting publisher negotiations
» How important is a specific publisher for your
institution/consortium?
» How expensive is the publisher relative to other publishers?
» What is the relevance of the publishers hybrid OA options vs
their full open access journals?
» For managing allocation of APC funds
» Proper sizing of an APC fund
» Proper price-capping of APC fund

28. Should APC funds be used?
» APC-funds have been found to have two effects
» Replacement effect
» Stimulating effect
» Most APC-funds in continental Europe fund only
articles in OA journals and exclude hybrid OA.
» Many APC-funds are managed by the libraries of
research organisations but funded (partly or entirely)
by research funders via so-called block grants.
» OA factors have an influence on journal selection http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/6665/1/
Financial_and_administrative_iss
ues_around_APCs_for_OA_June
_2017_KE.pdf

29. Costs transparency is good, but is not an
automatic enabler of change
https://openscience.fi/-
/transparency-and-openness-to-
scientific-publishing-the-finnish-
research-organisations-pay-
millions-of-euros-annually-to-the-
large-publishers
https://treemaps.intact-
project.org/apcdata/openapc/#institution/
country=SWE

30. Meticulous monitoring and analysis is needed

31. Use the public deal terms of others to
your advantage
http://www.openaccess.nl/en/in-the-netherlands/publisher-deals
http://finelib.fi/negotiations/negotiations/

32. Commitment, collaboration, and
communication
» Use public relations to your advantage, so do publishers.
» We have collectively dug a very deep hole which is impossible
for any single actor to take themselves out of independently.

33. On the internet, no good deeds for open science go unnoticed
Google.com (2018)

34. Need for collective action – nationally
and internationally
» The Dilemma of Collective Action (Wenzler 2017)
» "For academic libraries to continue to achieve their traditional role of storing,
organizing, preserving, and providing access to the scholarly record, they
increasingly will have to take responsibility for the entire cycle of scholarly
communication from publishing and editing through preservation, but it is unlikely
that they will succeed in doing so through the uncoordinated actions of individual
institutions and will require new experiments in cooperation and coordination.”
» The 2.5% Commitment (Lewis 2017)
» “…every academic library should commit to contribute 2.5% of its total budget to
support the common infrastructure needed to create the open scholarly commons.”
» ”…if we don’t collectively invest in the infrastructure we need for the open scholarly
commons, it will not get built or it will only be haphazardly half built. “

35. Alignment of reward systems
» Without diversifying academic evaluation and merit systems
change will be needlessly hard.
» It does not look likely that major publishers will initiate wide-
scale ”flipping” of journals to open access, even in cases where
hybrid OA uptake is rising.

36. A European open science label for
complying universities?
http://www.uio.no/om/aktuelt/rektorbloggen/2018/position_paper_from_the_norwegian_universities_web.pdf

37. A cultural change is needed
https://www.leru.org/publications/open-science-and-its-role-in-universities-a-roadmap-
for-cultural-change

38. © Hanken
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/are-preprints-future-biology-survival-guide-scientists#Why-now
Spread of preprint practice to more disciplines would
be one step towards lessened reliance on journals

39. It is possible to influence behaviour through
science policy
http://www.prepubmed.org/monthly_stats/

40. © Hanken
Homework

41. Think & ponder
» Considering the perspective of national-level expenditure
and national research output, what is the most sensible way
to support cost-efficient use of resources and optimal
dissemination of outputs?
» Right now
» In ten years time

42. Reading
» Free e-book by Walt Crawford
» Released 29th of May 2018
» 187 pages of bibliometric & economic analysis of all
journals in the DOAJ
» Open dataset
https://walt.lishost.org/2018/05/goaj3-gold-open-access-journals-2012-2017/

43. Key takeaways
» The transition to open access calls for brave steps forward, not moving
sideways and thus prolonging this unfavorable state of transition.
» A holistic picture of the financial infrastructure is needed. Centralised use
of funding and negotiation with service providers.
» Co-ordination is needed to make change happen, funders, universities
and national consortia should collaborate to push towards the common
goal of open access.
» Drive for systematic change, which includes support for complementary
and substitute alternatives to established outlets.

44. © Hanken
Thank You!

45. Key references
Lewis, DW (2017), "The 2.5% Commitment," September 11, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/14063
Wenzler, J. (2017). Scholarly Communication and the Dilemma of Collective Action: Why Academic Journals Cost Too Much. College &
Research Libraries, 78(2), 183–200. http://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.2.183